Weyerhaeuser, environmentalists argue logging's effect on floods
A photo by a Weyerhaeuser geologist shows the Stillman Creek site from a different angle and distance.
When a logging company has poor management practices that are not dictated by sustainability the outcome to soil erosion and the forest is far worse.
Dr. Jerry Franklin, a long time associate of any USA forest of this nation, has sound science incorporated into methods of sustainability. Keeping in mind the need for protections of forest in the face of Climate Change his principles should become a matter of law rather than voluntary practice.
The logging does not need to be eliminated from these private, corporate forests already in use for that purpose, but, the disturbance patterns need to be changed so the public is safe from poor practices. There are far better methods of disturbance that need to be implimented. These disturbance methods have been in existance a long time and without laws to force corporations to change their ways, they will continue in methodologies that endanger the public.
Effective legislation at the local, state and federal levels needs to begin to insure sustainable forests rather than just places where forests sometimes exist until logged. Of course there is more danger to flooding when entire mountains are logged of their trees, that is a hideous question.
Forest Management: Mudslide stumper (click here)
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
Legislators are up against a stumper, or what some folks want them to think is one: Could huge clear-cuts and development have had anything to do with the mudslides and flooding in southwest Washington?
Gee. Do you think? If you strip hills of vegetation, water tends to flow like crazy, carrying soil.
Logging industry representatives suggest everyone jumped to the wrong conclusions from a Seattle Times photo and TV footage of a nothing-but-stumps hillside. According to the AP, however, David Montgomery, professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington, told the state Senate Resources, Ocean & Recreation Committee that forest practice rules don't prevent landslides. Details of this event aside, that's the larger point.
With the hearing, Sen. Ken Jacobsen, the committee chairman, raised issues. He's also concerned about preserving older trees to assure their air-clearing contributions in the global warming era. So, here's another question that has really stalled the state: Will we ever -- finally -- exchange 20th-century-style clear-cutting for the "new forestry" advanced by the UW's eminent Jerry Franklin?
